1. Field of the Invention
The invention relates to a device for detecting, analyzing, identifying and characterizing by filtration and immunofiltration.
2. Description of the Related Art
The conventional means for detecting and quantifying typically employ overall quantitative techniques and procedures whether in industry or in the medical field.
In industry, for example, the degree of contamination or pollution of a fluid, especially fluids employed in hydraulic servo-control systems, is assessed by counting the solid particles of varying sizes retained by a filtering membrane having particular characteristics and dimensions. The particles are counted under a microscope utilizing a fixed grid. As is apparent, however, with this method it is not possible to detect chemical contaminants nor to determine bacteriological contamination which, nevertheless, are factors that are sometimes more important than particulate contamination or pollution.
In the medical field, a similar process is used to determine and/or quantify the presence of substance in swabs so as to facilitate diagnosis and to determine appropriate treatment or prepare a reagent. However, such processes have not been used in many areas of biomedical analysis and other methods have been preferred despite the constraints and inaccuracies thereof.